(The opening text of The Void Ratio - a book by Shane Levene & Karolina Urbaniak).

Into these deathly hallows. I Love you Darling. Do you find the landscape bleak? The fog sat low outside and the dew in the grass by the motorway? These things puncture the skin, that is all. Don't be scared. It's not like in the movies. I'll wake up in the morning, you'll see. You'll find me just where I am now: sat at the table near the window, in the breaking light of day, where the syringe replaces religion - held up, air bubbles flicked and rising free, its needle a part of the modern city skyline. London in the new millennium. All silver and aluminium and glass, reflecting the world two tones darker. Sleep well, Princess.... Who knows what life may bring today. Those clouds sure don't look good. And the seagulls. Can you hear them in your dreaming? Squawking away and going bird-crazy over some death in the river? Their silhouettes against the sky, against the last smoke of the industrial age. Oh, I'd cry eternally if it wasn't for THIS. Things are changing, Darling. The world is on the turn. War is coming, like you'll never believe. Don't you see it migrating out of North Africa and the Middle East? Sweeping across Europe? Not a religious war as such. More a war of the old ways versus the new. A war over what's gone on and what's been said; over what is left and in what direction the future world will take.

<--- Total ignorance THIS WAY

Total depravity THIS WAY --->

And you know which side I'm on. If only you could see what I see as I hold this needle to the sky. This sky which loves birds and hates the nuclear bomb. Really, it does. Now, if I can just... Oh, you've risen. I have been going on some. Are you weeping or is it the condensation on the window? Don't cry for me; cry for yourself. I'm your tragedy now; not mine. My tragedy I've long since forgotten what it is. At 18 I could have shown you. At 25 I could have told you. But not anymore. I no longer believe in individual tragedy, except yours of course, and that's only because you fuck so much more intensely when you're psychotic. Fuck. That hurt. Sometimes it hurts so little and other times it hurts so much. And you know, I know every type of pain there is. No pain is serious. It's just, well, painful. Death doesn't hurt. Dying is easy. It's holding onto life which hurts. People don't realize that. Junkies don't realise that. Numbing the pain is holding onto life, not chucking it away. Don't be fooled by peoples' make-up or myths. What I'm doing isn't self-destructive, it's quite the opposite. The médecins sans frontiers are self-destructive. Applaud them. Hero-worship them. Walk about pretending to be them. I'm not willing to die. I'm doing everything and more to stay alive. Aaaahh. Fuck. That tastes so good... Ohhh.

There was an old black and white film I once watched. It was an afternoon matinee at the Riverside Studios. I remember how the lights dimmed dark, and then came the silence, and then the crackling sound of static and old reel. I watched in horror as my life unfurled...

- - -

A new Memoires text coming soon... A work detailing the hell and misery that was present in my life during the writing of The Void Ratio. X

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